If you’re in need of diversion and joy, especially as we hunker down for winter, try Le Carnaval du Parnasse on for size. This baroque rarity by French composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (1711–1772), his second, received its premiere at the Paris Opera in 1749 and enjoyed 35 performances in just two months, such was its popularity. 

It’s not hard to understand why – its appeal is concisely identified by a French gazette in 1774, cited in the recording’s liner notes: “[the opera] is composed of pleasant and easy tunes, both for singing and dancing, which can be repeated and retained by the audience.”

If this makes Mondonville’s work sound slightly too easy to like, never fear. The music is consistently imaginative and vivid, with moments of real beauty, and bears many of the hallmarks of the composer’s style: an inventive approach to instrumental and vocal writing, a richness of mood and texture, and a passionate embrace of pictorialism. Dedicated to Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV’s favourite mistress and a famous patron of the arts, the work captures the many...